£27m debt of Privilege Wealth as it goes into administration
AN international investment company I warned against in 2016 crashed into administration last Monday with debts put at $38 million (about £27 million).
Privilege Wealth plc, based in Hertfordshire, has defaulted on a debt said to be owed to its Gibraltar sister company.
A further $7 million (£5 million) may also be owed to a Luxembourg-based fund that backed Privilege Wealth.
In an unsigned letter to investors, the Gibraltar company refers to the ‘impending liquidation’ of the British business and asks them to back a proposal to take whatever assets might be recovered and reinvest the proceeds in a new US-based scheme.
The letter blames the group’s problems on a series of bad decisions, including advancing £3 million to a payday loan company in South Dakota, linked to the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. Neither the advance nor interest was repaid.
Privilege Wealth also claims to be owed about £1.4 million by ‘Christopher Rock’, the head of its international call centre in Panama.
His real name is Christopher Burton and he is a well-known scam operator from Nottingham with a lengthy list of aliases.
I reported last April that Burton had been shot and seriously wounded in a targeted assassination attempt in Panama. He is now being held in Spain, where he faces charges of cheating hundreds of British investors who backed a dodgy Nevada oil venture he marketed from a boiler room call centre in Marbella, Spain.
Curiously, the letter to investors makes no mention of Brett Jolly, a central character in Privilege Wealth.
Jolly, from Southend-on-Sea in Essex, has been one of the main backers of the stricken group.
I sounded the alarm five years ago when he was behind Anglo Capital Partners Limited.
The firm used lies and false claims to cheat investors out of more than £1 million they poured into carbon credits.
Jolly is now banned from acting as a director of any British company.
He is believed to have moved to the Far East where Privilege Wealth has also been active.
Gunned down . . . fraudster who ripped of f thousands